FLASH POINTS: A look at 11 years of police shootings

Michael Norris / Amarillo Globe-News Members of the Potter-Randall Special Crimes Unit, Jimmy Rifenberg, right, and Ed Carroll, look over a SUV that was riddled with bullet holes after an early morning shooting Sunday, January 30, 2011 in the 800 block of Polk. The vehicle came to rest after crashing into the old Acapulco Mexican Restaurant location.

Potter-Randall Special Crimes investigator Jimmy Rifenberg marks vehicle skid marks after an officer-involved shooting Monday morning, April 5, 2010, at Hobbs and S.W. 34th Avenue. The suspect fled the scene on foot after a single gunshot wound to the leg. He was later captured.

The lone constant was that the life-and-death decisions — those that took away fathers, husbands and sons, and those that forever impacted the lives of the officers who pulled the trigger — were made in an instant.

From 2000 to last year, the circumstances varied widely. A man gripped his wife by the hair while clutching a shotgun at her back. An officer alone on a dark street confronted a gun barrel inches away. Chaos reigned as bars closed, crowds spilled into the night and shots rang out.

These were among the chilling scenarios into which city police were cast, cases in which intense training and carefully crafted policies were distilled to a single moment when officers were forced to decide whether to fire or risk their lives or others’ by failing to act.

The Amarillo Globe-News examined more than 2,000 pages of police reports describing Amarillo police officers’ use of deadly force in 27 cases over the last 11 years. The frequency of these cases has varied from a high of five in 2002 to lows of none in 2001 and 2005. In all instances, internal investigations and grand juries found officers responded appropriately.

One of those cases still lingers in the courts. Early Jan. 30, a year ago Monday, four Amarillo police officers fired 40 shots at a sport utility vehicle driven by Claudio Trujillo, 24, of Amarillo. He died several days later of gunshot wounds.

His case highlights the sometimes extraordinary complexities of police shootings. It took place on Polk Street in the heart of downtown. Trujillo was unarmed. But moments before he backed his black SUV from a parking lot onto Polk, unknown persons fired several shots in the lot, drawing police who’d been working to subdue crowds of late-night revelers.

Police have said bystanders told officers someone in Trujillo’s vehicle was armed. When he failed to heed their demands to stop the SUV, police fired, according to court documents.

Those explanations have not satisfied relatives of Trujillo, an ex-con who violated conditions of his parole prohibiting him from bars. His family last year filed a civil rights lawsuit pending in federal court, accusing officers of using excessive force in keeping with what relatives claim is a pattern of lacking discipline and inadequate training. The officers have said they did their job, and the city, a defendant in the case, has denied wrongdoing. Attempts to mediate so far have been unsuccessful.

What the shooting of Trujillo or other instances in which Amarillo police have used deadly force says about the department’s response in these fateful moments is difficult to ascertain. The number of cases, at least, did not trouble Alex del Carmen, who closely studies police shootings.

“If there were 27 uses of (deadly) force in 11 years, that’s impressive ... It doesn’t appear to be a concern,” said del Carmen, professor and chairman of the Criminology and Criminal Justice Department at the University of Texas at Arlington.

Comparing statistics from one city to the next is tricky, experts said, in part, because the volume of incidents tends to ebb and flow. Last year, for example, was relatively quiet, except, most notably, for the Trujillo case and a 16-hour span over the summer during which Amarillo police killed two armed suspects, one later found to have been carrying a BB gun.

Broad, uniform standards on the use of force simply don’t exist. Instead, federal and state laws and court rulings dictate what is permitted when an officer is confronted with a threat to themselves or the public. In the Trujillo case, for example, Amarillo Police Department policy cautions against firing on vehicles, but less clear are officers’ options when they fear a driver might be armed, posing a threat to police or other people.

“Most people in our society don’t understand the complexities,” del Carmen said. “As far as what’s justifiable, I think the general sense is they don’t fully understand the extent officers are allowed to use it.”

Self-defense laws allow the use of deadly force when anyone, including a police officer, is confronted with a threat. Both laws and policies say that if a reasonable person would have responded with deadly force because of a fear of death or serious bodily harm, the action is justified.

“They don’t have to be absolutely sure they’re going to die,” said Randall County Criminal District Attorney James Farren.

Fair analysis of the share of cases when police use force against people of a particular race or ethnicity compared to a city’s demographics also is difficult, del Carmen said, because of the wide range of other factors that may come into play. In the cases reviewed by the Globe-News, 40 percent involved Hispanics, who make up 29 percent of the city’s population. But del Carmen cautioned against drawing conclusions from the percentages alone.

“You have to take cases on an individual basis,” he said. “They could have been subject to the use of force for a good reason.”

Gender emerged as the one absolute in the shootings reviewed by the Globe-News. In every case, police fired on men. In almost three-fourths of the cases, those men fell in the 21-40 age bracket. Two were younger than 21. Four were older than 51. Twelve were white and four were black. Eleven cases involved Hispanics.

Police said there are other commonalities in cases when officers use deadly force.

“Emotions and alcohol are always fuels, and testosterone is one of the most dangerous drugs when you combine it with alcohol or other drugs,” said Sgt. Brent Barbee, Amarillo Police Department spokesman. “You get aggression.”

A key question in any police shooting is whether officers confronted someone who was armed.

Officers in the cases examined by the Globe-News faced a variety of weapons, most of them guns. In eight cases, suspects carried handguns. Four were armed with rifles or shotguns. Three toted pellet or BB guns that were replicas of the real thing. In nine cases — including Trujillo’s — suspects were driving vehicles in what police considered to be a threatening manner or suspects failed to heed officers’ commands.

Amarillo police policies don’t forbid firing at vehicles but guidelines say “the optimal course of action is for the officer to move out of its path.”

Two men had sharp instruments — one had two knives and another had a saw. In one case, the assailant used his fists.

Timing varied. Fourteen incidents took place from March through August and 15 from September through February. Similarly, time of day varied: 15 shootings took place between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m., and the remainder took place throughout the remainder of the day.

Eleven shootings happened in northeast Amarillo and three took place in the southwest. Almost three-fourths of the cases were in the northern sector, defined as the area north of Interstate 40.

At least seven cases involved suspects who police found to be intoxicated or on drugs. One man, while shot by police, actually died from extreme cocaine intoxication, according to autopsy results. There are six more cases in which suspects had drugs or drug paraphernalia nearby but reports didn’t specify whether those people were under the influence.

Everything from furtive behavior to intoxication can fuel confrontations. A life in shambles and an encounter with police can combine for “suicide by cop.” A lack of respect for the authority of law enforcement, leading to a refusal to comply with orders, can be just as lethal.

Many of the cases reviewed by the Globe-News seemed to follow these scenarios as well as some just being a crime suspect in the wrong place at the wrong time. Mental illness was a factor, too. Two cases involved people previously diagnosed with psychological problems.

Police came in contact with the suspects for a variety of reasons, ranging from a stakeout to catching a suspected drug dealer to someone shooting at a patrol car in the night.

Finding statistics for comparison on a national basis is challenging, with entities using different methods to track officer-involved shootings after a push for a national standard fell apart in 2006. Georgia, Maryland and Montana never participated, and other states provided incomplete information, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Texas complied, but the numbers reflect statewide statistics.

Varying police department policies and practices and the demographics of a location can make valid comparisons impossible, del Carmen said.

“Some cities when you draw your gun you have to fill out a use-of-force form,” del Carmen said.

That adds an instance of force used to that department’s statistics whether an officer fired the weapon or not.

Even comparisons to the rest of Texas could be misleading, del Carmen said: “Amarillo is a world unto itself. You know that. When you start comparing use of force to the Metroplex or East Texas, it’s apples and oranges. What’s fair?”

Still, efforts are ongoing to gather uniform data from U.S. cities.

The House and Senate Judiciary Committee have passed the Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2011, a bill that would reinstate mandatory reporting for states that receive certain federal criminal justice grants. The bill, which seeks counts and causes of deaths from the time first contact with law enforcement to jail, has not gone to a vote of the full Senate.

“This information is crucial for policymakers to be able to identify patterns and make necessary changes,” said U.S. Rep. Robert Scott, D-Virginia, sponsor of the bill.

The FBI compiles some data that shine a dim light on the situation nationally. In 2010, the latest year for which data were available, 53,469 officers were assaulted while performing their duties, situations that could cause them to fear for their safety, a key consideration in the use of deadly force.

Police who use deadly force face an overriding question from investigators, prosecutors, grand jury members, the community in general and even in the minds of the officers themselves: What happened?

After a shooting in Amarillo, there are two investigations, one by the Police Department’s Special Crimes Unit that probes homicides and one by the department’s Internal Affairs Division. The Special Crimes results go to the district attorney and a grand jury for a determination of whether there was criminal wrongdoing.

“Grand juries are our check against prosecutorial overreaching. They make sure if charges are going forward at all they have a basis in reality. They allow for citizen input,” said Mary Rose, associate professor of sociology and law at the University of Texas School of Law.

Findings of the internal investigation go to a disciplinary review board composed of four police captains who decide if there were any violations of police policy, said Amarillo police Chief Robert Taylor.

Other jurisdictions use different methods to dig into what happened, such as citizen review boards. Communities with extreme distrust of their criminal justice system, especially police, sometimes demand that a police department or city commission or council appoint an advisory committee that usually has little power.

“There is a dearth of solid evidence regarding the outcomes, impact and value of citizen review,” according to the International Association of Police Chiefs in its suggestions on setting guidelines and expectations for a review board.

Generally, the push for a board follows a highly publicized incident.

“The growth has slowed. A lot of that is based on if citizens feel police are not adequately policing themselves. Los Angeles is an example. It started with Rodney King,” said Harry Hueston, an associate professor of criminal justice at West Texas A&M University who also has more than 30 years of experience in law enforcement.

While the names of departments in charge of investigating officer-involved shootings vary — there are Special Crimes in Amarillo and the Homicide Detail in San Francisco, both of which look for legal violations — the structure of internal and criminal investigations, with input from prosecutors, followed by scrutiny by prosecutors or grand juries is similar in many U.S. cities.

The judgment standard is also the same. There are numerous court rulings, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Tennessee v. Garner in 1985 informs the investigations and law enforcement policies on deadly force.

“Such force may not be used unless ... the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others,” the court ruled.

It’s a determination officers have only an instant to make with ramifications that may endure forever beyond it.